Ep 70: James Parton, Jason Taylor (October 12, 2012; originally aired November 5, 2010)

Rounds: Here.


James Parton is back for his third night, and we find out that at the age of twelve he "burst onto the gumboot-throwing scene".  He won the junior division, and as a result he competed in the senior division.  He ended up coming second, losing by 1.5 metres to the world champion.

Tonight's challenger is Jason Taylor, a data entry officer with a master's degree in history and a love of cricket.  Richard asks Jason what parts of history he is most interested in, and Jason responds that his biggest interest is European history, mainly English, around the 16th and 17th centuries.  He then adds medieval to that list, which basically expands it by a millennium.


James got an early lead in the first round, then Jason struck back in the second with an eight-letter word to take the lead.  But that was about it from Jason, who only managed to give valid answers in two of the remaining seven rounds.  He was a little unlucky on one of them, admittedly (and I was surprised by the ruling, but I'll get to that in due course).  James ran out the winner, 48 to 14.

I... had a good game.  A maximal game, in fact, and with conundrum speed of two seconds there's a case to be made for optimality, although I'm sure Sam would have gotten to it faster.  Regardless, I'm happy about it, as you would expect.  It was my first score in the eighties for a couple of weeks, and it was very nice to finish off the week on good results after Wednesday's effort.